


Don't Deny your Heart

by Berenjena



Series: Tales for Two Broken Cognitions [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Also spoilers of the Councilor Confidant, And his friend who I just gave him some small backstory because I can, Based on what Shibusawa tells you when he finds you on the street after [redacted], Gen, General Angst, Lets shed more love on Maruki, Mentions of the Phantom Thieves - Freeform, Palace Introspection, Persona 5: The Royal Spoilers, good ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25929142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berenjena/pseuds/Berenjena
Summary: Half an introspective piece about what happens to a person who lives in a Palace, half wistful thinking after reading about what Shibusawa tells you when the MC finds him on the street.Maruki-centered, because I love him.
Relationships: Maruki Takuto & Shibusawa
Series: Tales for Two Broken Cognitions [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1881784
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Don't Deny your Heart

Once upon a time, Takuto Maruki had been happy. He had been once young and full of dreams. He had friends and a fiancée whom he loved lots. While he had not a house for himself, he shared an apartment house with some of his psychology classmates and friends.

When did all change? If you asked Maruki, he would tell you that all began the day when Rumi asked him, in tears, to forget it all. He had the memory plastered in his brain, it was something he would never forget.

But not even he knew that it wasn’t the truth.

The day after The Reckoning he was left aching and alone. Stripped of his staff he was left limping on a gas station near Yongen Jaya. Pilfered off his desire to control the life of people – no matter how good his reasons were nor how nice his intentions had been, he knew no taxi was going to receive an emaciated man who couldn’t stop crying. Not that he tried to stop doing it.

His world had fallen, after all.

He had no house nor an apartment anymore (or at least he thought so, as he had been living for a pretty long time in his Palace, after all), his youth had been robbed via a certain corrupt politician and his cronies in University. He had no fiancée, he had no friends to talk.

What had been worse, his own students, his _patients, for fucks sake,_ had taken his Dreams away, all of them! And he knew he wouldn’t be able to get them again for a long while, if not forever.

Wobbling into the streets with his sight on the cloudy sky, Maruki thought that even if he was wearing his trusty faux coat, the beautiful snow that fell out that night seemed to had made a home in the inside of his bones.

Takuto Maruki had nothing.

And with that in mind, he started to wander.

Palaces were really convenient, if Maruki had to say the truth. All that was inside his own Palace was tailor made for him, all what was inside moved and changed and formed and melted when he wanted or needed to. Time? Space? He was _forever_ , he was unaffected by those. Just one thought and bam, he got whatever he wanted on the very same second. The very last days before The Reckoning, his powers had grown so much he could do the same things inside and outside his Paradise. The clothes che used outside could change with opening and closing his eyes, since the fabric of the world had changed into a weave he could mold and shape into anything he wanted, the last days before the Reckoning the world was made of the same fabric of his Palace’s realm. All could mutate as he wanted, all of himself could do that if he desired. He was God, after all. A merciful one, yet still a God.

Now, in comparison, while limping and leaning on whatever wall he could find when his tired feet wouldn’t let him continue anymore on his aimless wandering, he thought to himself “I really was a fool, huh”.

He hadn’t eaten for an entire month. He hadn’t even drank water in all that time! There was no need when his power maintained him alive, yet he also never did thought that his own version of the World of Control would be overthrown in just one night.

He had been a fool, he thought while grabbing his stomach, who demanded him to replenish all he had lost. Tokyo was a city who prided itself on being always awake, but no one would help him if he had no cash.

Maruki sat down on the cold snow piled on the floor in the middle of nowhere. He had no idea where the fuck he was.

His damaged phone had cracked with his fall, probably when the Phantom Thieves leader had shooted at his face – it had been so scary! Yet never as terrifying as the situation he was now. While it still functioned, the touch system didn’t work, neither did the hour/day widgets, showing distorted number and a completely different day. Maruki sighed and said no word, even if he wanted to scream and curse at everything and everyone. He had no energy for that anymore, he had already used it punching his student – god, he hoped he was alright anyways, his punches weren’t as strong yet there WAS a difference in between the strength of an adult and a youngster like him.

The doctor – well, maybe not a doctor anymore, he didn’t even deserve that title anymore, sighed again. It was time to get out where he was, letting his feet guide him where they wanted to.

He didn’t care anymore.

He didn’t want to start caring now.

Snow still was falling and the sky was still dark, so the bespectacled man suspected it still had to be near 3 AM. He had walked for at least an hour since the world regained its form again and let him spawn wherever it wanted to, and he still had no idea of where he wanted to go. Not near his house, for sure. Probably not near Shujin also, he didn’t want to be recognized. He also was unable to stop his feet, it seemed they had an idea to where to go.

He hadn’t stopped hurting nor starving, yet he still moved even if he didn’t particularly wanted to walk. So he left it.

That’s it, until they stopped in front a certain apartment door, one that he had been inside, had known once and just once.

Apartment 506. Shibusawa’s house.

His last friend’s house, the last one he had seen when he wasn’t in the Messiah drapes, when he was still a normal man.

The tears that had been frozen by the chilly wind of the night started to flow again. He sobbed loudly once, then tried to mute himself. He really was in no condition to go back to nowhere, his strength had abandoned him when he was able to recognize that door. Maruki tried to concentrate on something else to not lose his last thread of sanity, his first idea was to clean his glasses with the hem of his shirt. But one touch of his hand and the glass cracked, crashing to the ground with a faint crack sound, they had gotten chipped since his battle against Joker and Maruki hadn’t even noted it. 

With a wail, the doctor fell on the ground, trying to reunite the pieces. And that’s how Shibusawa found him, who had been startled by the sobbing that, even when muffled, still managed to resound inside his quiet apartment room. Even while sleepy, he could see what his once-upon-a-time best friend felt. A wreck of a person, someone who thought he had no value anymore.

Not a god, not a man.

Nothing.

“Shibusawa…”

And he threw himself over his friend - he needed to help him somehow!

“Maruki!” His friend screamed, uncaring about the good sleep of the other apartment owner’s sleep. “Are you alright? Did someone mug you? Please tell me, what the hell happened! Do you need a doctor???”

It was ridiculous, the amount of concern he was receiving from his old friend. Even if his tears still fell freely to his chin and then to the ground, and he couldn’t understand all what his friend was screaming at him, the amount of sheer love he received in that few seconds was unsurmountable.

A laugh escaped out of him, again without him knowing. His mind was somewhere else.

Maruki thought to himself _“Maybe I should learn to believe in myself and in the rest of those around me a bit more.”_ And what it came from his lips, even if it sounded different, it was on the same line of thought.

“Yeah, I need help” Maruki said, his voice all raspy, yet with a sound that Shibusawa haven’t listened in years. At least not from after what happened to Rumi.

He understood.

“Enter then! Do you need help standing?”

“Yeah, please.”

“M’ sorry to interrupt your sleep, Shibusawa, I didn’t mean it, I swear”

“Don’t worry about that now, will you? You are more bruised than a banana, what the hell happened to you?” – Shibusawa said, inspecting his face with a warm hand. Glasses removed and thrown somewhere into the living room, Maruki’s face was at his friends total disposition. With his thumb, he removed the tracks of recent tears, smudging also the ones that had been there since his Paradise Disappearance. “This are old… how many hours have you been outside…”

“Ah… ahaha…”

“Shit, Maruki, where is your self-preservation!? Couldn’t you have called me first if you needed help at least? You aren’t alright, you are almost blue! Shit—I’ll turn on the heater.”

“Do I—“

“Don’t even try to move.”

Calmer now, Maruki was able to look – more like squint - at his friend’s house and at his friend itself while he fumbled with the heater. He had always slept in boxers, he had always known that. He looked more like a man than what he had remembered before. A bit more muscle, a bit more hair. His house reflected his minimalist style, all well poised and in the same colour palette. He had always liked black.

He wondered what his friend would say if he looked at his body, outside the obvious bruises. He knew he had to be almost skeletal.

_*sigh*_

Maruki knew he had to invent something fast, what had happened in the Metaverse/Actualized Real Life was not something that everyone could understand after all.

His best option was to lie by omission.

“Well… I was assaulted on my way home. They stole everything from me, and I…”

Shibusawa looked at him immediately after he said those words, his hands had stopped fumbling with his old as fuck heater to search for his phone (Maruki supposed) on the trousers he wasn’t using.

“Shit, you want me to call the police? Maybe call the hospital so they can check your wounds?”

Maruki hadn’t finished talking, and continues as if uninterrupted.

“… I had a breakdown.”

Silence passed through both of them for some seconds, they didn’t know what to say to the other. Shibusawa decided to wait, there was not too much he could say after seeing his friend display his true self at him. It was something new, to see Maruki like that. Last time he had seen him he seemed a bit more composed with his own self and glowing with his ambitions finally giving fruits. He knew his friend was stupidly stubborn, and a loner to a point where he wired himself to be unable to work with other people, subconsciously at the very least. So, having his friend display so openly the fact that he had a breakdown had to mean that something far more terrible had happened to Maruki than just getting some of his items stolen.

Thus, he shut up.

“Something very important for me was stolen off, and while… while thinking on what I had to do to recover it again, I noticed that I was—I had always did the wrong thing. I had always thought that all what happened to me was something God had entrusted me to follow since I was sure to be helping so much people with it, but it turns out my methods and my whole way of thinking behind was wrong.” Maruki said, his voice trembling under his hands. “And now it turns that I didn’t just lost everything I’ve loved in this world, but I also was _stagnating_ everyone I thought I was helping… I—I just lose it—I’m…”

Shibusawa didn’t move from his side. He just looked at him, his small black eyes pouring all his attention on him. It was unnerving, but the bruised man couldn’t say that he felt bad about it – he had worse things to feel bad about.

“So. It—it took the thieves some time to take me out, and then—you see—they left me like this…” Maruki said, signaling the places on his face that hurt the most. He had no idea of how he looked, and he didn’t know if he would be able to stand out the comfy chair he had been sat – thanks to his friend – to see himself in a mirror, but he knew that he had to look pretty bad to have Shibusawa be so damn soft while he touched his face. Really, he felt like a porcelain doll. “And well… I was in an area I didn’t know much so…”

Shibusawa stood out and left him hanging, going to another room all of a sudden.

“Eh—did—“

“Wait for me, I’ll go prep some food. Don’t even try to stand from this chair.”

“Oh- ok.”

He waited. He waited a bit longer. He rearranged his coat a bit and placed his cracked phone on one of the inside pockets of it – he had to make it look like it had been stolen – he thought, a bit hysterical already.

 _“What the fuck”,_ he thought, _“That didn’t went at all what like I expected”._ He expected tears, maybe a hug, understanding words, whatever. Never to be left and talking to the air while he decided to prepare some – fried stuff – at 4 in the morning.

What!

By the time Shibusawa appeared again, Maruki was picking his scabs on his left hand, unsure of what else to do.

“Eat one.”

It was karaage.

“After this we will go smoke some cigars, you need to calm down a bit. I haven’t forgotten about your _‘don’t smoke with an empty stomach’_ spiel, but who woulda thought it would be me remembering it to you again, huh?”

Ah, he remembered those words. T had been so long, from when they were still on the same university course together on their shared room. When Shibusawa made him smoke his first cigar after him nagging him of how bad it could be to smoke with an empty stomach.

Yeah, how could he forget.

He really needed to start believing more on other people instead of martyrizing himself.

People changed, they learned. Just as he did, just as Shibusawa did years ago, how some simple words about bad health and smoking brought him off his reverie, his thoughts about the family he had left behind in the north of Japan, how bad he felt about failing the courses he had been on due to his loneliness.

Yeah.

He remembered now.

“I’m sorry for all, Shibusawa.”

“I know, I can see it in your face. I know also that you can’t tell me all what is in your head, but you must know that I’ve been always here for you man. We are friends, and even if I don’t see you as much, it wouldn’t stop me from beating the shit of those thieves or whatever that left you like this.”

“Haha, no, please don’t… I’ve learnt my lesson already.”

The karaage was delicious, Shibusawa had always been an expert with fried foods. They drank beer and laughed happily while watching the sunrise, both with a cigar on their hands. They didn’t talk anymore about their current problems, but remembered things about their past together, when they still were able to see their friends daily and not once in a year. When Shibusawa mentioned Rumi in a slip of the tongue, he was really surprised to see Maruki not backing off in shame, as he usually did when he was remembered of her, and laughed off at the memory altogether.

Hours later, when Shibusawa woke up, Maruki wasn’t on his apartment anymore. He hadn’t left a number to get in touch with him, nor a direction to follow.

He was worried, but not so much, if he had to be honest.

He smiled.

He was sure his friend was going to be ok. 

**Author's Note:**

> hey
> 
> I PROMISED
> 
> also it aint necessary to read my other piece, Tales for a Dead Man, to understand this fanfic. Yet its based on the same uhhh Palace ending and broken timeline. I would love it if you read it pls :eyes:
> 
> Also I'm planning to write more porn of this two. Be prepared wwww


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